


Fragile Gifts

by wowbright



Series: Glee Season 4 episode reactions [7]
Category: Glee
Genre: Episode: s04e11 Sadie Hawkins, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowbright/pseuds/wowbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>4.11 reaction. Blaine loves three different people in three very different ways. Kind of a mirror piece to "Unexpected Gifts" (<a href="http://wowbright.livejournal.com/24004.html">lj</a> / <a href="http://wowbright.tumblr.com/post/41554361577/fic-unexpected-gifts">tumblr</a> / <a href="http://wowbright.dreamwidth.org/46026.html">dreamwidth</a>), but can be understood on its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [nachochang](http://nachochang.tumblr.com) for betaing! Title inspired by [meta](http://misqueue.tumblr.com/post/41470705321/replies) by  **[misqueue](http://misqueue.dreamwidth.org/)**. Any errors are mine.

 

[lj](http://wowbright.livejournal.com/24259.html) / [tumblr](http://wowbright.tumblr.com/post/41923779159/fic-fragile-gifts) / [ dreamwidth](http://wowbright.dreamwidth.org/46129.html)

\------

It's not that Blaine's in love with Sam. He knows he's not. He's been in love before and he's still in love and he knows the difference between really liking someone and thinking that they're cute and sexy, and being wholeheartedly, hopelessly, and perhaps inadvisably in love with them.

But Sam has been an unexpected delight in so many ways. Blaine has started to feel at home at McKinley, and he wouldn't have that without Sam. Despite Sam's pretty awful record with romance prior to Brittany, Sam has this knack for accepting love and friendship wherever it's available. He sees the best in people, and it's not the way that Blaine sees the best in people – Blaine does it because he's hyperaware of just how awful they can be, but it hurts to pay attention to anything that isn't good. Blaine wants to be friends with everybody not because he actually thinks they're awesome, but because it's more pleasant to be liked than to be hated.

But Sam just loves people and lets them love him back, and none of it seems frightening to him, and it's not a way that Blaine has ever looked at the world before. It's exhilarating – and sometimes scary, too, but in a totally different and less awful way than the fear that Blaine has carried around with him for most of his life.

So Blaine is starting to feel at home, and starting to feel like he knows how to make friends, and like he's learning to be who he is. It's not a feeling that Blaine has had before except when he's been next to Kurt.

When Blaine first started feeling like maybe McKinley was his place – he thinks it was that moment when the glee club was painting over graffiti on the outside walls of the school and Brittany came over to him and started painting his shirt and his nose like he was part of the building (she didn't _say_ he was part of the building, but the gesture made him feel like he was, and his heart filled with a joy that he hadn't felt since the night before Kurt left for New York, and they were curled up together on the couch, Blaine's back against Kurt's chest, Kurt's arms wrapped around him and their four hands clutched together across Blaine's chest, and Blaine could feel Kurt's heart beating, both their hearts beating – not in time, but in a complementary rhythm that was much more complex and beautiful than any 4/4 beat) – he felt like he'd been given a second lease on life. The best part wasn't over yet.

He has Sam to thank for that.

And it became even more his place the afternoon that Sam went with Blaine to the food pantry to drop off what they'd collected in the McKinley food drive. They brought boxes and boxes into the building, and the director smiled so giddily you'd think she'd just fallen in love at first sight, and the volunteer she sent out had the kind of body that could make you feel like _you'd_ fallen in love at first sight, and Blaine apparently was not very good at hiding the fact that he was totally enamored of the guy's ass and forearms and the way his shoulder muscles rippled through the back of his t-shirt when he lifted the heaviest boxes, because after they said their "thank yous" and "you're welcomes" and "good-byes" and Blaine and Sam got back into the car, Sam nudged his elbow and said, "You're right, that guy was totally hot."

"Um ... I didn't say that he was –" Blaine stopped. Years of carefully avoiding saying anything around most straight guys that remotely hinted of sex made it impossible to continue.

"Yeah, you didn't have to. Your _eyes,_ dude."

"Sorry." Blaine looked down at the steering wheel and turned the key in the engine.

"What are you apologizing for? If I was gay, I'd totally want to tap that." Sam scrunched his eyebrows. "I think. I guess it's hard to know for sure. But one advantage of working in a strip club is that you learn to tell if a guy is hot, even if it doesn't come to you naturally. You know, because it kind of becomes obvious when a dude's g-string gets crammed with dollar bills night after night."

Blaine bit his lip and did not say _You probably had the most dollar bills of anyone in the joint._ He just smiled and tried not to laugh and totally failed. The laughter was like a fountain that had been stopped up and was suddenly allowed to flow, and Blaine had to turn the engine back off because he could not stop laughing, and Sam protested, "Dude, I was totally serious. It's not a joke," but then he started laughing, too, and Blaine doubled over and was practically kissing the steering wheel and the tears were streaming down his face and his stomach muscles started to hurt, he hadn't laughed that way in so, so long.

Sam makes him laugh all the time now, in the way that Blaine hasn't laughed since he and Kurt used to watch _Jersey Shore_ together. When Sam gets going on World of Warcraft or conspiracy theories or the layout of the Starship Enterprise, it reminds Blaine of the way that Kurt goes on about celebrity gossip or serging versus straight-stitch or the advantages of shea butter over jojoba oil. They both light up, and carry Blaine along on their tidal waves of enthusiasm, and Blaine gives himself up to it, the way he learned to long ago as a little boy at the beach near his grandmother's house – go lax and let the waves carry you and everything becomes easy, you just bob and float and the sun shines on you and you're part of the ocean, and you're happiness itself.

The only true friend that Blaine has ever had before Sam – the only person that Blaine let himself trust, let himself be _himself_ around – is Kurt. Friendship and romance and sex are hard things to keep separate in Blaine's mind. So of course everything gets tangled up and confused.

It would probably be that way even if Sam didn't have those blowjob lips.

Blaine thinks, sometimes, about his straight friends at Dalton – how even they would get crushes on each other sometimes, hang out constantly and swoon over everything the other did like he was the bee's knees.

Blaine never really understood it, this intense emotion that bordered on romance but wasn't _in-loveness,_ and it drove him kind of nuts, because when he first came to Dalton he thought it meant that everyone was gay and he would have a boyfriend soon, and it took months for him to realize they were, apparently, straight and just _really_ liked each other.

Nick and Jeff were like that, to the point that more than a semester passed before Blaine realized they weren't actually dating. (It maybe hadn't helped that Wes was constantly telling them to "Go get a room.") When Blaine found out they both had girlfriends, he just figured they were bisexual and in one of those poly relationships (he'd read about them in _Savage Love_ , but never seen one, and was rather intrigued), and it took several late-night conversations to even begin to wrap his head around what their relationship actually was.

"I don't know," Nick said in one of these chats. "Sometimes you meet a person and you just fall for them. But it's not always falling in love. I mean, I wondered about that a bit, when I first met Jeff and everything was so intense, you know? I thought maybe I was falling in love. But it's more like – I was falling into myself, you know? Around him, I feel like the person I want to be. But there's not – I don't have that feeling of desire that I think I would have if I was in love." Nick smirked then. "And I don't feel compelled to serenade him with dirty songs in the Gap."

Blaine added another check to the "No" column in his mental checklist of "Am I in love with Kurt?", because he'd never felt compelled to sing dirty songs to Kurt in the Gap, either. He'd only sung dirty songs to Kurt in the common room, and those didn't count, because Blaine had been required by the set list to sing "Teenage Dream"; and with "Baby It's Cold Outside" – well, he'd needed to practice it, and he hadn't even thought about it as a serenade to Kurt until they were halfway through the song and Kurt's breath hitched at _Your eyes are like stars right now_ and Blaine realized that Kurt's eyes _were_ like stars (bright like the belt of Orion, to be exact) and his lips were so tender-looking and perfect.

"But you and Jeff are always holding hands and hugging. And you kiss," Blaine said.

"Yeah, _on the cheek_. It's not like we're slipping each other tongue. I mean, I kiss my mom and my dad and my brothers –"

"You kiss your brothers?"

"Sure. I'm Italian," Nick said, as if that explained everything. Well, Blaine _had_ seen _The Godfather._ He supposed it did. And maybe it explained why Blaine had sometimes felt the impulse to kiss Kurt.

It didn't explain why he'd wanted to suck on Kurt's neck, though.

Once Blaine realized he was in love with Kurt, it became even harder to understand Nick's and Jeff's relationship, so he just stopped trying. It wasn't really his business, anyway. Everyone should be allowed to love in their own way.

It's only been in these past few months with Tina that Blaine has started to have an inkling of how Nick might feel about Jeff. Because Tina's awesome and strong and assertive and everything that Blaine wants to learn to be, and it's so difficult _not_ to adore that, so difficult _not_ to gravitate toward her when he sees her in the hallway or the cafeteria. Plus, she understands the bicultural stuff in a way that Kurt never could – not because he doesn't _try_ , but because he just doesn't _know._ Being a Korean Jew and a Filipino WASP aren't the same thing, not really, but what they have in common is that they're different from every other way of being, and that people make all the wrong assumptions about you because they don't want to make the effort to understand that you're not just one thing. Tina gets that.

And so she's become a kind of home for Blaine, too, the way that McKinley and maybe Sam have. Not the way that Kurt is – definitely not that; but a home all the same – a place where he knows and is known.

And so Blaine touches her, and giggles with her, and sends surreptitious texts back and forth with her when he should be paying attention to what the teacher is saying. Sometimes they look at each other and know exactly what the other is thinking without having to say anything (which started when they were in the Cheerios, and Coach Sylvester would say something ridiculous, and the only way to complain about it was to share a look, because if you said anything out loud, you'd be off the team – and neither of them could afford to lose the security of a team just then).

It's exciting and fun and he loves being near her, but never once has he felt the urge to serenade her or meld his body with hers or write her name over and over again down the margins of his notebook.

He watches her wide-eyed and adoring during her performance of "I Don't Know How to Love Him" because she's an awesome singer and the song is perfect for her voice, and there need to be more songs like that, ones that are exactly in her range, because it's beautiful when she can just be herself and doesn't have to force her voice into the wrong register. And because she's so perfectly beautiful, more real and raw than Rachel ever was; and because the words break into his heart, make him miss Kurt so bittersweetly, make him think she might understand what he's going through with his ridiculous crush on Sam _._

There's no way that the guy she's singing this for is going to say no. She's perfect. If he were straight, he'd probably be in love with her. He can't know that, of course – just like Sam can't know for sure that he'd want to tap the ass of the food pantry volunteer if he were gay – but the chances seem pretty damn high. It's hard to imagine how any straight guy _wouldn't_ be in love with her.

She sings the closing notes of the song and his heart swells and he thinks, "This is what platonic friendship is. I get it now." He adores her the way that Nick says he adores Jeff, and it's beautiful in a totally different way than his love for Kurt.

And then she announces that the song was for him.

Which means … she's in love with him. Or thinks she is.

Blaine says "no" for many reasons, most of which contradict each other. He says "no" because he doesn't want to go to a Sadie Hawkins dance, and especially not with a girl – it's like admitting defeat to the people at his old school, this many years later. He says "no" because he doesn't want to dance with anyone but Kurt. He says "no" because he keeps thinking about Sam's blowjob lips and doesn't want to dance too close to them. He says "no" because he might have said "yes" if Tina weren't in love with him.

Tina's confession brings back all his old fears from before he dated Kurt. He was so afraid that desire would destroy the perfect thing they had between them.

It did, eventually.

He's scared for his friendship with Tina, and he's scared for his friendship with Sam. Desire ruins things, if you're not exquisitely careful with it.

So he tries to be careful with Tina. But it's hard to be careful with someone who's not being careful with herself. And it's hard to resist the entreaties of someone you love.

So Blaine goes to the dance, and he's as charming as Tina wants him to be, because she makes him feel charming and charmed. It feels good to hold someone, even if it's not Kurt, and it feels good to laugh, and it feels good to bring a smile to the face of someone gorgeous and kind.

Those moments of the dance are the good ones. But there are other moments, too: moments when they're dancing too close to look at each other, and he watches the other couples over her shoulder, all so odd in their sameness – girl-boy, girl-boy, girl-boy, every single one – and he doesn't feel at home in McKinley anymore, even though he looks just like them, here in the arms of a girl.

After the dance, when it's just the two of them in the car, drinking hot cocoa from the 7-11 and talking, things feel more natural. It's like being with Tina used to be, back before the serenade. They hold hands and he thinks it's okay because she says it is. And they're talking about how much he misses Kurt, so it's not like he's sending any mixed signals there.

Everything feels so natural and lovely and safe that, when she drops him off at his door and hugs him goodnight, he kisses her cheek without thinking. Just a peck – but it's enough that he hears her breath catch.

He wasn't going to call Kurt tonight. But when he gets to his room, it's the first thing he does.

"Tina has a crush on me," he says after the preliminary greetings.

"Of course she does," Kurt says. "I was wondering when that was going to happen."

Blaine flops backward on his bed. "Are you serious?"

Kurt hums. "You've been hanging out a lot. She's straight. You're … dapper. Things were bound to happen."

Blaine huffs. "Why didn't you warn me?"

"Um, because I didn't actually see it coming. I'm only psychic in hindsight."

Blaine rubs a hand over his face. "So what do I do?"

"I don't know. Mercedes used to have a crush on me, and she got over it."

"How long did that take?"

"Probably longer than would be comforting for me to tell you at this moment. The important thing is that she got over it. And remember, Rachel was in love with you for a whole week, and she got over it, too."

"Yeah, but this is worse than Rachel. I wasn't friends with Rachel when that happened. I'm friends with Tina."

"I know," Kurt says. "It's hard with friends. When one person wants something and the other one … can't."

"Yeah," Blaine says. He's pretty sure their conversation is veering into talking-about-two-things-at-once territory, but maybe that's just because Blaine wants it to be about him and Kurt as much as it is about him and Tina. "It's just – everything was so good. And then this."

"It can still be good," Kurt says after a long silence. "It'll work out. I know it will."  
  
\---The End---

 


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